The philosophy of Wittgenstein is both novel and enigmatic. What is his new revolutionizing methodology? What is his aim, his purpose, his intention? What does he mean by the puzzling terms ‘forms of life’, ‘language-games’, ‘seeing as’? The key to the answers, according to the thesis of this paper, lies in Wittgenstein’s conception of the ‘Weltanschauung’. By the explanation of the use of this term, the entire philosophy of Wittgenstein may become illuminated with new meaning and interpretation. In understanding the (...) meaning of the word ‘Weltanschauung’ we shall come to understand why Wittgenstein used his new method, just what that method was, and what the impact of the concept and method had on the terms ‘Language-game’, ‘forms of life’ and ‘seeing as’. (shrink)

This book updates and adds to the classic Social Movements of the Sixties and Seventies, showing how social movement theory has grown and changed.

To the evolutionarily oriented clinical psychiatrist, the discipline of behavioural ecology is a fertile basic science. Human psychology discusses variation in terms of means, standard deviations, heritabilities, and so on, but behavioural ecology deals with mutually incompatible alternative behavioural strategies, the heritable variation being maintained by negative frequency-dependent selection. I suggest that behavioural ecology should be included in the interdisciplinary dialogue recommended by Keller & Miller (K&M). (Published Online November 9 2006).

John Heil’s new book ranges over many of the major topics in metaphysics, including substance, properties, causation, space, time, parts and wholes, modality, essence, agency, and consciousness. It has interesting things to say about all of the issues it discusses, but there are three topics that are especially prominent in the book, and which help to organize the discussion. These all flow from the differences between our everyday, commonsense understanding of reality and the representations that are offered by science.

The maker of a regularly divided scale is faced with a task of such conceptual simplicity that he is bound to fail, such is the nature of real materials and men. Using sophisticated modern measuring tools, we can now accurately chart the error in every division of an old linear scale. The resulting pattern of errors across the scale provides a unique signature, containing a random component that could not be precisely repeated by the artisan, and a systematic component, reflecting (...) the fine detail of the technique he used. Taking a small sample of scales made for different purposes about 200 years ago, from a precision linear measure by J. Sisson to two mountain barometer scales by J. Miller of Edinburgh, a method of examining the error pattern is discussed using statistical techniques developed for time series analysis. From the quantitative information present in the division sizes and their errors, useful conclusions and inferences are drawn on the origin of the scales, the tools and the techniques used by individual makers. (shrink)

This article presents a process account of some typicality effects and related similarity-dependent accuracy and response time phenomena that arise in the context of supervised concept acquisition. We describe Symbolic Concept Acquisition (SCA), a computational system that acquires and activates category prediction rules. In contrast to gradient representations, SCA performs by probing for prediction rules in a series of discrete steps. For learning new rules, it acquires general rules but then incrementally learns more specific ones. In describing SCA, we emphasize (...) its functionality in terms of accuracy and efficiency and motivate its design within the set of symbolic mechanisms and memory structures defined by the Soar architecture (Laird, Newell & Rosenbloom, 1987). For replicating human behavior, we first show how SCA exhibits some typicality effects in the course of learning responding faster and more accurately to more typical test examples. Then, using data from human experiments, we evaluate SCA's qualitative predictions on accuracy and response time on individual dataset instances. We show how SCA's predictions correlate with human data across three experimental conditions concerning the effect of instruction on learning strategy. (shrink)

Holistic Learning is designed as a practical guide for teachers on how to integrate curriculum around human processes and human themes. Specifically, problem solving (human process) and mythology (human theme) have been selected as vehicles for curriculum integration. Along with a number of specific strategies for classroom use, the book includes a rationale and framework for integrated studies, teaching approaches in problem solving and mythology, guidelines for writing units in integrated studies, and implementation strategies for integrated studies. The primary audience (...) is teachers at the intermediate and senior levels, although muc of the material is applicable to teachers at all levels of the curriculum. Individuals in curriculum leadership positions (e.g., principals, co-ordinators, and superintendents) should also find the work of interest. Holistic Learning is a practical guide for teachers seeking approaches to integrate diverse subject matter. (shrink)

This essay argues that the affective component inherent in the enthymeme is the essence of aristotle's concept of the enthymeme as practical reasoning. 'affective component' refers to emotions and feelings. The three proofs of the thesis are the etymology of 'enthymeme', Aristotle's works on human action and practical wisdom, And aristotle's rhetoric. These sources show the inherent relation between enthymemes and phronesis, Or practical reasoning, Not nous, Or abstract intellect.

The dominant unspoken philosophical basis of medical care in the United States is a form of Cartesian reductionism that views the body as a machine and medical professionals as technicians whose job is to repair that machine. The purpose of this paper is to advocate for an alternative philosophy of medicine based on the concept of healing relationships between clinicians and patients. This is accomplished first by exploring the ethical and philosophical work of Pellegrino and Thomasma and then by connecting (...) Martin Buber's philosophical work on the nature of relationships to an empirically derived model of the medical healing relationship. The Healing Relationship Model was developed by the authors through qualitative analysis of interviews of physicians and patients. Clinician-patient healing relationships are a special form of what Buber calls I-Thou relationships, characterized by dialog and mutuality, but a mutuality limited by the inherent asymmetry of the clinician-patient relationship. The Healing Relationship Model identifies three processes necessary for such relationships to develop and be sustained: Valuing, Appreciating Power and Abiding. We explore in detail how these processes, as well as other components of the model resonate with Buber's concepts of I-Thou and I-It relationships. The resulting combined conceptual model illuminates the wholeness underlying the dual roles of clinicians as healers and providers of technical biomedicine. On the basis of our analysis, we argue that health care should be focused on healing, with I-Thou relationships at its core. (shrink)

Considered one of the most important works of modern philosophy, Critique of Pure Reason offers a profound exploration of the nature of knowledge and perception. In this English-language translation by JMD Meiklejohn, Immanuel Kant's seminal work is made accessible to a wider audience. Illuminating and challenging, this book is an essential resource for anyone interested in the history of philosophy and the nature of human thought. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of (...) the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

While it is still some way from commercial production, in vitro meat is drawing significant media coverage. IVM’s promise is meat without suffering, with a diminished ecological footprint and potential for addressing global food shortages. For all its novelty, IVM has been present in creative literature since at least 1881, with a particular concentration of references appearing in Cold War science fiction. After an initial survey of the literary pre-history of in vitro meat, this chapter focuses on Frederik Pohl and (...) Cyril Kornbluth’s 1952 novel The Space Merchants, a stinging critique of post-war programmes of agricultural intensification that revolves around Chicken Little, a decades-old “hundred-ton lump of grey-brown rubbery flesh”. Although the novel nostalgically valorises a lost pastoral world of purportedly authentic human–animal relations, The Space Merchants is not a straightforwardly conservative text, however, but one which raises crucial questions about the cultural meaning and ideological function of IVM. (shrink)

We discuss misinformation about “the liar antinomy” with special reference to Tarski’s 1933 truth-definition paper [1]. Lies are speech-acts, not merely sentences or propositions. Roughly, lies are statements of propositions not believed by their speakers. Speakers who state their false beliefs are often not lying. And speakers who state true propositions that they don’t believe are often lying—regardless of whether the non-belief is disbelief. Persons who state propositions on which they have no opinion are lying as much as those who (...) state propositions they believe to be false. Not all lies are statements of false propositions—some lies are true; some have no truth-value. People who only occasionally lie are not liars: roughly, liars repeatedly and habitually lie. Some half-truths are statements intended to mislead even though the speakers “interpret” the sentences used as expressing true propositions. Others are statements of propositions believed by the speakers to be questionable but without revealing their supposed problematic nature. The two “formulations” of “the antinomy of the liar” in [1], pp.157–8 and 161–2, have nothing to do with lying or liars. The first focuses on an “expression” Tarski calls ‘c’, namely the following. -/- c is not a true sentence -/- The second focuses on another “expression”, also called ‘c’, namely the following. -/- for all p, if c is identical with the sentence ‘p’, then not p -/- Without argumentation or even discussion, Tarski implies that these strange “expressions” are English sentences. [1] Alfred Tarski, The concept of truth in formalized languages, pp. 152–278, Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics, papers from 1923 to 1938, ed. John Corcoran, Hackett, Indianapolis 1983. -/- https://www.academia.edu/12525833/Sentence_Proposition_Judgment_Statement_and_Fact_Speaking_about_th e_Written_English_Used_in_Logic. (shrink)

Descende caelo, Horace's ode 3.4, challenges the reader with an elaborate Pindaric architecture embracing seemingly disparate elements. After an opening invocation, the poet discourses at length on how the Muses protect him, then abruptly notes that those goddesses also nourished Octavian after his recent military campaign. This breaks off into a composite Titanomachy/Gigantomachy, followed by a set of maxims which the poet further illustrates with other mythical exempla. This paper contends that the relationship among these various parts comes into clearest (...) focus in the five-line description of the god Apollo that closes the Gigantomachy. This passage lies at the heart of the entire poem's major interpretive issuespoetics, panegyric, allusion, and structure but its pivotal role in the ode deserves fuller acknowledgement. (shrink)

The essays in this book engage the original and controversial claims from Michael Boylan's A Just Society. Each essay discusses Boylan's claims from a particular chapter and offers a critical analysis of these claims. Boylan responds to the essays in his lengthy and philosophically rich reply.

Although it is frequently overlooked, J.S. Mill's political philosophy has a significant civic component; he is a committed believer in the value of active and disinterested participation in public affairs by the citizens of liberal democracies, and he advocates a programme of civic education intended to cultivate public spirit. In the first half of this essay I present a brief but systematic exploration of his thought's civic dimension. In the second half I defend Mill's civic liberalism against various critics who (...) have explicitly or implicitly charged that the civic and liberal components of his political philosophy are inconsistent. (shrink)

Aristotle's Politics is widely recognized as one of the classics of the history of political philosophy, and like every other such masterpiece, it is a work about which there is deep division.

The frame problem refers to the fact that organisms must be able to zero in on relevant aspects of the world and intelligently ignore the vast majority of the world that is irrelevant to their goals. In this paper we aim to point out the connection between two leading frameworks for thinking about how organisms achieve this. Predictive processing is a rapidly growing framework within cognitive science which suggests that organisms assign a high ‘weight’ to relevant aspects of the world, (...) effectively treating relevant aspects of the world as if they are more precise. This assignment of weight is called precision-weighting and is the predictive processing account of how organisms allocate their attention. Relevance Realization is a framework that conceptualizes an organism’s ability to realize relevance as resulting from a dynamical system in which a cognitive agent makes use of opponent processing relationships to zero in on relevant aspects of the world. In this paper we use recent work on the diametric model of autism and psychosis to demonstrate that the tradeoffs inherent to precision-weighting are also inherent to relevance realization. This connection will demonstrate that although these frameworks have a different intellectual background and use a different set of concepts and vocabulary, they are both pointing to the same underlying process. The fact that these different frameworks have converged on such a similar solution to the problem of how organisms realize relevance serves to demonstrate the plausibility of that solution. (shrink)

The recent highlighting of meat’s environmental costs has added acute urgency to longstanding moral and political contestations around animal agriculture and the meat economy. This introductory essay sets out the volume’s key premise that the practices of our contemporary meat regime are shaped as much by cultural and imaginative factors as by ecological debate, political deliberation and moral reasoning. Specifically, drawing on work by Melanie Joy, Annie Potts and Nick Fiddes, we explore the value of literary-critical perspectives as a complement (...) to the more familiar ethical and political analyses. We begin by offering an historical overview of meat culture as it has developed in the last century in Europe and North America before outlining the ways in which a post-anthropocentric literary practice is emerging in relation to this context. This survey allows us to articulate the volume’s contribution to work in animal studies and the more recent field of vegan studies, as formulated by Laura Wright and others. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

On June 16, 1966, the New England Journal of Medicine published “Ethics and Clinical Research” by Henry K. Beecher. Beecher’s account of 22 examples of unethical contemporary clinical research shook up the medical profession and helped pave the way for U.S. federal regulation of research involving human subjects. Five decades later, in this issue of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, we pay tribute to the lasting significance of this whistle-blowing article and to the remarkable contributions of Henry Beecher. Beecher was (...) a pioneer in anesthesiology as an academic discipline and in research on pain and the placebo effect. He was an early and influential champion of randomized placebo-controlled... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Triumphus in PalatioJohn F. MillerAs one of the many tokens of its symbolic centrality in Roman culture, the Capitoline Hill received the triumphator at the end of his ceremonial return to Rome. For centuries generals who had been granted a triumphus concluded the elaborate sacral procession through the city with a sacrifice at the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the god most intimately associated with this religious institution.1 The (...) strongly local character of Roman cults made it nearly unthinkable to celebrate the solemn event anywhere else in Rome, but artistic imagination feels itself less bound by religious scruples. Two such ingenious revisions of the triumphal parade displace its endpoint to the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine Hill. Virgil imagines Octavian's great triple triumph of 29 B.C. taking place there, while other ancient evidence leads us to believe that the victor really proceeded to the Capitoline like countless imperatores triumphantes before him.2 The poet sets the celebration at the shrine of the deity credited with the victory at Actium, the shrine which Octavian built adjacent to his own house. The Palatine was becoming the imperial palace complex, the triumph a prerogative of the imperial family.3 When these developments had been fully realized, Nero in December A.D. 674 staged an eccentric victory procession which likewise climaxed at Apollo's Palatine temple. As returning victor in the festivals [End Page 409] of Greece he aimed to align himself with Apollo as patron of the arts, expressing now in topographical terms his frequent association with that deity.5 The lyre-playing god greeted the lyre-playing emperor, and vice versa. On the other hand, it is not irrelevant that one whom Pliny termed imperator scaenicus, "an actor-emperor" (Pan. 46.4), rode in the path of Virgil's fictional Augustus. The present essay explores the phenomenon triumphus in Palatio by explicating the two instances in the light of their ideological impulses. A further aim is to throw into relief the Augustan dimensions of Nero's triumphal ceremony, to show how the emperor in effect acted the part of Octavian riding in triple triumph.On the shield in Aeneid 8 Virgil inventively describes the triple triumph which Octavian celebrated in August 29 B.C. for victories in Illyricum, Actium, and Egypt:at Caesar, triplici invectus Romana triumphomoenia, dis Italis votum immortale sacrabat,maxima ter centum totam delubra per urbem.laetitia ludisque viae plausuque fremebant;omnibus in templis matrum chorus, omnibus arae;ante aras terram caesi stravere iuvenci.ipse sedens niveo candentis limine Phoebidona recognoscit populorum aptatque superbispostibus; incedunt victae longo ordine gentes...(8.714-22)One finds here familiar features of any triumphus: the imperator triumphans formally entering the city precinct (714-15), bystanders en route applauding the procession (717), the sacrifice of bulls (719), concluding dedications at a temple (720-22), and the display of captives, placards, and models illustrating the victor's conquests (722-28). But Virgil has also rewritten this triumph to take in a wider sacral and historical context. In verse 719 the general prayers and sacrifices and the prominent role of women suggest a supplicatio, a ritual often associated with but [End Page 410] formally distinct from triumphs.6 While triumphing commanders fulfilled vows which they made on the Capitol before their campaigns, Octavian's triumph is marked by the impressive votum of numerous mighty shrines throughout the city (715-16).7 Caesar's celebration looks ahead as well as backwards; it in effect announces the emergent leader's vast program of building and restoring temples, which was especially prominent in the period immediately after the triumph of 29.8 For Virgil, Caesar's triumphus inaugurates the religious renewal of Rome.By far the most momentous changes to the regular triumph occur in the scene at Apollo's gleaming temple, which in this context must be the new Palatine shrine.9 Whether dona... populorum (721) are the [End Page 411] ceremonial crowns which captives presented to the victor or euphemistically denote battle spoils from various peoples, the act of affixing them to the temple suggests that the triumphator has reached the triumph's end point. So does... (shrink)

In every domain, the philosopher finds some principle which is unfalsifiable in so far as all experience is interpreted in accordance with it. This principle is tautologous or analytic-within-its domain in that it defines fundamental terms with which it characterizes experiences: Newton’s Laws define “mass” and “the equality of times”; the Principle of the Rectilinear Propagation of LIght defines “light”; the Principle of Evolution defines “adaptation” and “natural selection”; and the Principle of the Conservation of Energy defines “a closed system.” (...) Moreover, each principle is employed as a methodological rule or a tacit imperative to the investigator to interpret experience or to draw inferences in accordance with it. Nevertheless, each principle has empirical content: not only by virtue of its place within its respective domain but also because there are sufficient rules of correspondence which make the statement-form empirically relevant; not only because the principle itself is taken to be true but also because empirical inferences are drawn in accordance with it. To construe these principles as mere counterfactuals would be clearly incorrect. Counterfactuals, as Rescher would characterize them, are “belief-contravening suppositions” because certain beliefs are excluded if one is to be consistent. Although this is certainly true of these principles, the range of beliefs contravened is far larger than those beliefs excluded in mere laws of nature. For, to give up these principles would be to give up explaining the entire domain of experience to which they are applicable. (shrink)

The 'Art of Life' is John Stuart Mill's name for his account of practical reason. In this volume, eleven leading scholars elucidate this fundamental, but widely neglected, element of Mill's thought. Mill divides the Art of Life into three 'departments': 'Morality, Prudence or Policy, and Æsthetics'. In the volume's first section, Rex Martin, David Weinstein, Ben Eggleston, and Dale E. Miller investigate the relation between the departments of morality and prudence. Their papers ask whether Mill is a rule (...) utilitarian and, if so, whether his practical philosophy must be incoherent. The second section contains papers by Jonathan Riley and Wendy Donner, who explore the relation between the departments of morality and aesthetics. They discuss issues ranging from supererogation to aesthetic pleasure and humanity's relationship with nature. -/- The papers in the third section consider the Art of Life's axiological first principle, the principle of utility. Elijah Millgram contends that Mill's own life refutes his claim that the Art of Life has a single axiological first principle. Philip Kitcher maintains that Mill has a dynamic axiology requiring us to continually refine our conception of the good. In the final section, three papers address what it means to put the Art of Life into practice. Robert Haraldsson locates an 'Art of Ethics' in On Liberty that is in tension with the Art of Life. Nadia Urbinati plumbs the classical roots of Mill's view of the good life. Finally, Colin Heydt develops Mill's suggestion that we regard our own lives as works of art. (shrink)